On Compassion

Imagine that you're eating at a gourmet restaurant, because people who read my blog generally eat at gourmet restaurants. Now imagine that your waiter is one of the worst waiters you've ever seen. He seems like he's sneering whenever you speak. He's always slow. He gets your order wrong -- twice. His voice sounds like something crawled into his mouth and is dying in there. So you undertip him, or maybe you don't tip him at all, and you're not as nice to him as you might be. Later, when you tell the story to your friends, you have every justification for your actions. Your story elicits sympathetic laughs and groans, and you feel vindicated.

Now imagine being the waiter at a gourmet restaurant, and you're going through the worst day of your life. Your car and phone both break, simultaneously. Your soul mate has just left you. A beloved family member has died. You were just diagnosed with a rare disease, possibly terminal. You show up to work hating everything about the world. After a long, unfulfilling day, you have one customer left, and you decide to stop trying. You're unenthusiastic, you mess up the order, and you don't care. Later, when you tell the story to your friends, you have every justification for your actions. You were having a horrible day-- your friends give you their sympathies, and you feel vindicated.

It's weird that we can do this kind of rationalization in both cases. The only difference between them is who you are. The other party is just as human as you. Just as capable of emotion. But this didn't matter. It was just as easy to justify the first scenario as it was the second.

Suppose that you in the first situation pretend that the waiter you have was you in the second situation. (Hopefully that makes sense.) Or suppose that every time you get a bad waiter, you make up a story about him, putting him through imaginary torments and impositions in your mind. At the end of this unhappy mental journey, the waiter in you're imagining has gone through hell. It's a miracle that he even managed to get out of bed today, let alone get to work. This would entirely change the way you behave towards him -- instead of undertipping, you would be more inclined to overtip, as condolence for his hardships. Even if you're wrong -- that is to say, the waiter is actually just a terrible waiter -- your kindness may inspire change in his behavior.

The way of thinking I've just described is, I think, a powerful way of looking at the world. If you perceive others not as a gender, not as a profession, not as a means to and end, but a person, an actual, real-life, breathing, feeling human being, if you give them a story, you greatly expand your capacity for compassion. Certain individuals in history have exemplified this expanded capacity: Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, to name three. Maybe this quality is rare. Then again, maybe it isn't -- maybe you just have to train yourself to feel this way. I submit that showing compassion, regardless of circumstance, brings out the best in others.